Three ingredients for the future of urban transportation

When I was 20 my then boyfriend found me in tears over high-speed rail infrastructure. I had realized with desperation that I was likely already too old to ride high-speed rail in Canada before retirement. Being too old for things you want is rough when you’re 20. Big, ambitious transport infrastructure like subways (and fast intercity rail) are important, but it takes a long time to plan and build. No, I am not complaining about red tape. Infrastructure is slow in Canada because building big, without killing people, without shutting down major roads for years, and while protecting access to local businesses, just takes time. Even if we prioritize the funding and fast-track the planning, any big infrastructure project announced now will only be operational in the 2030s. In the meantime, we have a growing population that needs ways to move around, particularly in underserved neighbourhoods and communities. We cannot solve this problem with cars, be they autonomous, shared, or electric. There isn’t enough space for both car-oriented transport and well, much of anything else. Plus, we face the moral mandate to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to protect the planet from climate change, fundamentally incompatible with continued automobile reliance. Of course, we should be building big rail projects both within and between our communities. But what about the first 10 years, while those projects are in design and construction? Our problems and our neighbours shouldn’t have to wait that long for better transport. Luckily there is a lot we can do. Options that are cheap, fast, proven, low tech, and widely popular when they are built. I’m talking about dedicated bus lanes and bike lanes (cycle tracks). Both can be rolled out in a weekend with paint and pylons, or built in weeks out of concrete when more permanence and protection is on order. They cost orders of magnitude less than new highways or subways and so we can build much more for much less. Global and Canadian experience has shown that once they are built, more people use them than even the most optimistic advocates predicted. If it sounds like I’m offering “one cheap easy way to get sustainable and equitable transport by beach season,” that’s because I am. COVID has proven what is possible. Cities of all sizes in Canada, from Moncton, to Calgary, to Victoria, invested in cycling infrastructure in 2020. Toronto and Brussels built 40 km of bike lanes in one summer. Paris built 50 km. The European Cycling Federation reports 1,111 km of cycle lanes built between April and December 2020. To transform urban transportation now, and for the next 10 years, we need three key ingredients. First, connectivity. Dedicated bus and cycling space are most effective when cities reallocate inefficient polluting automobile dominated use of road space to the higher capacity, cleaner, cheaper buses and bikes. Not surprisingly drivers are rarely fans of getting less space and many see bikers and bus riders as other, meaning these investments often involve a fight and political gumption is required. Dedicated bike and bus routes benefit from a go-big-or-go-home attitude; small projects don’t get much use as they don’t go anywhere. Second, vehicles. Dedicated bus routes move faster and carry more people but need more buses to keep up the level of service. While still cheaper than mega infrastructure, some funding is needed. Buying the new buses, at approximately 1 million a bus, is an expense that many municipalities need support for. Upper levels of government can help with direct funding and bulk purchasing. Similarly, while bicycles are much cheaper than cars, outfitting an entire family is prohibitive for too many Canadians, especially while people still feel they need a car given currently limited alternatives. Meaning, ironically, that a $10,000 car feels like a necessity and a $300 bike a luxury. Cash grants, tax rebates, employers’ subsidies and expanded bike rental programs will be needed to make sure anyone who wants to ride can. Canada already subsidizes electric cars. This policy should be extended to electric bikes which expand who can ride and how far they can go. In Lithuania, the government supports trading in an old car for a new ebike. Public funding can support and expand bicycle libraries. In a growing number of cities, including Copenhagen, Edinburgh, and Burlington, Vermont, you can borrow a cargo bike for those shopping days with heavier loads. And third, staff. Canadian cities and regions have historically spent most of their transportation energy on managing automobile infrastructure; rapid ramping up of bus and bike space will need more staff for roll out, monitoring, bus driving and enforcement. Municipalities should be bold in expanding their planning and operational active and public transit teams. Transport infrastructure defines how we move, where we live, our opportunities and our impact on the planet. We need to make slow, expensive, ambitious investments for the future, and fast, cheap transformative changes right now. The 2020s in Canada should be the decade of the bike and bus. Shoshanna Saxe is a an assistant professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering at the University of Toronto. The Hill Times